It's Not Love Choriss!
by EVOLustory
Summary: In which Gintoki and Hijikata have their usual fight at the wrong time, get captured by none other than Katsura, become forced to play a virtual reality dating sims game, and in order to escape from said crazy terrorist, must fall in love with each other. Virtually, of course. [GINHIJI]
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **What am I doing here? So at last I have gotten over my little hiatus status, ahem. However, this is my first Gintama fic so y'all probably don't know who the heck I am. Yeah, people don't know me in any fandom actually. I'm a nobody. But yes, I wrote a thing for GinHiji because they are my love and I have lurked this fandom long enough to have read every other GinHiji fic okay. I'm in withdrawal. I need this fic to happen. I have another AU idea I'll probably poop out after I'm dried up with this one. Anyway please read and leave a comment/review because those little blurbs of your opinions motivate me! 

**WARNING: **Lots of fucks given courtesy of two angry men...secretly in love. I'm also my own beta-reader so expect a few mistakes, whoop.

**DISCLAIMER: **I am not Hideaki Sorachi. I do not own Gintama. This disclaimer applies for every chapter posted hereafter.

* * *

**It's Always Gintoki's Fault**

* * *

"Oi, Zura?" Gintoki's voice trembles as he mutters out the terrorist's name. "I don't care what kind of joui shit you're up to, but please don't get Gin-san involved, okay? I'm a delicate man."

The sound of clothes rustling against restraining ropes halts in priority for, "Fuck your delicate shit! This is all your fucking fault to begin with. I'm so gonna arrest you for this!"

"How was it even my fault, ah?" Gintoki shouts, twisting his body to face the man tied up behind him. "I was just on my way home from buying Jump when you started poking your nicotine stained nose all over my face!"

"Your shit face was the thing poking in around my face!" Hijikata shouts, a snarl on every part of his expression.

Gintoki's mouth parts to deny the statement, but before the words could begin, a pretentious laugh rings across the empty room—the kind that are trademark of evil villains, '_muahahaha.'_

A tile in the ceiling retreats and a small monitor lowers into the front of the room. The screen lights up to reveal the face of a nationally wanted man, of course, in a poorly chosen disguise.

"The brain of the Shinsengumi, Demon Vice-Commander, has finally been captured!" he gloats in a voice full of mirth. "This was all thanks to you, Gintoki. You acted as wonderful bait, as expected of my former comrade."

"Zura!" Gintoki drawls the last syllable, voice jumping, nose scrunching, and lips twitching up at the corners. His usually dead looking red eyes are glossed over with an unamused panic, darting every once in a while toward the man behind him who looks ready for murder, if the crazy look in his dilated pupils is anything to go by. "This isn't funny, oi. Gin-san has nothing to do with this. I was just a citizen passing by."

Hijikata's gaze is fixed on the screen in front, burning, threatening, and looking as if his eyes alone will be enough to kill the man laughing triumphantly through the monitor. He grinds his teeth, snarls, "Katsura. I hope you're fucking prepared for abducting an officer."

"Oh, I am prepared. For your suffering, that is," he smirks and his eyes crease, fine lines folding down the sides, with an impatient mischief. "Men, bring the gear out!"

The door swings open and two rogue jouis bring in two sets of head gear that look freakishly futuristic, complete with plastic green eyewear. On any other day, either or both Gintoki and Hijikata would jump the men first chance they got, but the thick chains on top of gritty rope tied them up useless. All they can manage to do is wiggle. The chains have been locked onto a metal beam that runs from ceiling to floor. And so Hijikata continues to glare daggers and shout profanity while Gintoki shouts for Katsura, meekly begging for freedom in exchange for three hundred yen as the two jouis snicker to each other before arranging the gear onto the two captive's head. They leave once the equipment has been settled.

"Behold, the ways of non-radical terrorists! I will allow you a chance to escape out of here, Shinsengumi!" Katsura crosses his arms and dips his head in a manner to show that, yes, he is civil and above average terrorists. Gintoki shouts something about himself that goes unheard by both Katsura and Hijikata. "If you can beat this game that I created, then I will set you free. You could say, in a way, that you are a beta player," he announces, chest puffed out and nose turned high and proud.

Gintoki groans, throwing his head back in wonder at his childhood friend's idiotic antics. "Why the fuck would you even capture your enemy and make him play a fucking _game_! How much free time do you have, Zura?"

"It's not Zura! It's Captain Katsura!" he shouts into the mic and folds his arms again, closing his eyes and nodding. After a moment of silence he turns toward the screen, pouts, and says, "Well, I wasn't getting much screen time in the new manga arc, and every time I did show up, it was only in flashbacks. While all of you guys were out there getting action and hogging the limelight, I was put on standby! Do you know how it feels like to be put on standby when the past arc is basically about me? No! You don't!"

Hijikata and Gintoki's faces drop into a blank is-this-dude-serious expression, both undoubtedly thinking that the man on the screen is in dire need of rehabilitation. Against their disdainful looks, Katsura coughs and regains himself.

"What I mean is, I created this dating sims game because we joui can do anything, and I need beta players. What's a better guinea pig than the Shinsengumi dogs, I thought. And with Gintoki, we have two people, how perfect!"

"Hold up!" Hijikata barks, "Why do I have to play a dating game with this homeless perm? Go find some other fucking trash to play your third rate games or I'll blow your head out, since it's rotten anyway."

"Who did you fucking call homeless, ah? I'll have you know I actually have a home unlike some Madao."

"You can't really call it _your_ home if you don't even pay rent."

"Is that how you talk to citizens paying for your meals—"

"Love-Love Choriss-Choriss Super is not third rate!" Katsura shouts, thumping his hands against a surface, creating a commanding thump, "No matter what you say, you have to play this game if you want to get out! That is the condition."

"So in the end it's just some botched up version of Love Choriss," Gintoki comments flippantly.

"It's not Love Choriss! It's Love-Love Choriss-Choriss Super."

"Get to it," Hijikata grits, "What are these helmet things anyway?"

"Those are what will convert the game into a virtual reality. While the game is in progress, anything that happens to you will translate to your senses in real life. Once the scan is complete, your body will go into a dreamlike state so you do not have to worry about playing hours on end. This is indeed a masterpiece. Now let's get started," Katsura holds up a disc, slides it into somewhere, and presses a few buttons that make soft beeping noises.

"W-Wait," Hijikata hesitates, eyeballing Gintoki who is throttling against the metal beam like a maniac convinced that Amanto have tied him up and want to cut his family jewels off. "How long will this take?"

"Oi! Why are you going along with what that idiot's saying?" Gintoki thumps his back against Hijikata.

"I'm not! I was just askin' because we might as well play the dumb game if this gets resolved faster," Hijikata groans, thumping back harder in return.

"Well that depends on which standard of time we're talking about. The game runs on a time format that is only twelve hours in real life, but you won't be able to feel the difference. So two days in game will equal one day in reality. But of course, everything depends on how you two want to cooperate," he hums thoughtfully, "Then I'll be starting the game now."

"No, wait, Zu—"

The green plastic eyewear flashes a bright red light that penetrates their retinas and creates a heavy, sinking feeling, pulling both consciousness and eyelids down into weightless terrain. The red invasion lingers in the moment that the scan is completing the separation between body and consciousness. In that moment, the men jolt, rattling chains, and in the next, they are standing upright, appendages hanging free. Hijikata's head whips around in search for a familiar broke-ass face as the red fades from his vision to reveal a foreign landscape around him. Gintoki, in his own bout of frantic head dance, wheels himself around to find an identical gaze of confused terror staring right back at him.

"What. The. Fuck." Hijikata enunciates each word with a breath of wonder. His hand rises to gesture at the offensive garments cladding the body of the man before him. When his gaze travels down Gintoki's black suited legs, across the cement pavement, and to his own two feet donning never-seen-before black shoes, his eyes widen and his arms flail around himself, touching every part unseen by eyes.

Gintoki watches Hijikata soak in the transformation with a dazed expression. He himself had already realized their new clothing first thing after the scanning.

"We're in school uniforms, Hijikata-kun. God this is so cliché," Gintoki sighs, "I mean seriously? High school dating sims?"

"What—How did Katsura even do this?" Hijikata makes an annoyed sound in the back of his throat, running a hand through his hair.

Gintoki looks around, noting that the street goes straight down for at least five blocks. Scratching the back of his neck, he says with an apathetic look, "I guess the only thing to do now is to walk and bump into a cute girl with bread in her mouth. C'mon, let's go otaku boy."

"Who's an otaku, you natural perm!" Hijikata bites back, but follows behind Gintoki as he walks down the one-way street.

He notices intersections and alleys on their way down, so out of curiosity, he strays a bit to explore one of the smaller streets stretching out of the main street they are walking on. Upon rounding the corner, his foot drives into a tall transparent wall-like structure. Cursing, he folds over, hands fondling his wounded foot. While hopping on his good foot, he looks up to see a bulletin tacked onto the wall, reading, "Restricted access: Level-up to unlock."

"He's putting too much effort into this, that Zura," Gintoki comments in a monotone voice from above, startling the crouched over Hijikata, who jumps, one-legged, face first into the clear wall.

"Ow! Fuck! You—" he cusses, hands flying from his foot to his nose in a fraction of a second,"—Shut the fuck up!"

Gintoki casts his gaze down at the red-faced, bug-eyed Hijikata, a taunting grin spreading across his face. "But I didn't say anything, yet?"

"Yet!" Hijikata points out, straightening himself, still mending his nose. "Ugh, forget it. I'm leavin'."

"Are your otaku senses finally tingling?" Gintoki stretches his arms above his head, walking a step behind Hijikata. "Is Tosshi the one with us now?"

A fist flashes past Gintoki's right temple, but his blank face remains unfazed. He blinks.

"Whoa, whoa, let's not get violent here," Gintoki sings in a tone that does anything but soothe Hijikata's jerking nerves.

"Shut. Up." Hijikata's lips pull back into a frown, "I can't believe I'm even here in the first place. It's all your fucking fault, holy fuck. You're like a walking curse."

At that, Gintoki straightens up defensively. "Oi, oi, Hijikata-kun. If you had just let me walk along my merry way back then, we wouldn't have gotten into that argument, and _you_ wouldn't have gotten distracted, which means _we_ wouldn't be _here_ right now!"

"Don't even get me started!" Hijikata warns, a vein throbbing on his temple.

He balls his fists, resisting the urge to strangle the man behind him. Gintoki simply huffs and kicks a pebble past him. On the final stretch, they see a building that looks unsurprisingly like a school up ahead. A cherry blossom tree's curvy branches spill over the stone wall enclosing the entrance of the school. A golden double-gate blocks off the rest of the entry way. Past the golden wires is a grand fountain that would have been the picture of elegance if not for the mutant duck-shaped stone statue in the centre.

"What?" Gintoki whines, "We've already arrived at school even though the heroine with bread in her mouth thing never happened?"

"Good. We don't need that cliché trash," Hijikata states, pushing the gates open.

"Are your expectations so high because you've already been through all the clichés a thousand times, Otaku-kun?"

Hijikata pointedly ignores Gintoki's snide comment because he _is _a mature adult who has a functioning role in society unlike one white-haired freelancer. He leads them toward the door of the main building. They enter into a shoe locker area and Gintoki wanders off to see if his name is printed onto any of the lockers, which he finds that it is not. The sound of their shoes squeaking against linoleum echoes down the hall, heightened through gameplay for dramatic effect. Gintoki follows Hijikata up the only flight of stairs, staring idly at the back of his head and noticing that the longer strands of Hijikata's dark hair flutter in the air. Gintoki wonders if the gameplay creates unnatural breezes too, to produce the celebrated shoujo romance hair-in-the-wind scenes.

"So, which classroom?" Hijikata's question brings Gintoki's train of thought back to the matter at hand.

He sidesteps Hijikata and heads toward the closest classroom.

"It's gotta be the first one," he reasons, testing the door, and sure enough, it slides open.

Gintoki enters first, scanning the room. The classroom is filled with approximately thirty seats, lined up in the standard single spaced arrangement. Around the room, students are gathered in small groups or sitting alone at their desks. There seems to be an even distribution of males to females, seeing as the game is directed at both male and female players.

"Oh, this is finally starting to feel like a dating sims," Gintoki whistles before making for the nearest girl.

Gintoki goes through the usual process of introduction with the NPC girl. Upon contact, a translucent bar with a heart underneath appears to the right of the NPC. This must be the Love Metre, he thinks.

Hijikata is heading toward Gintoki when a hologram pops up between them. On the left corner of the hologram is an icon of a face that looks strikingly like Katsura. Text then begins to appear beside his bobbing head. This catches Gintoki's attention, and he walks over to Hijikata's side.

**Katsura:** "Ah. I forgot to mention this before, but you guys are playing the two-player mode. This means that to complete the game, you guys must raise each other's Love Metres. Raising other NPC's Love Metres would be counterproductive, Gintoki."

What.

_What._

Gintoki's back that has started to expel an abnormal amount of cold sweat somewhere after the words 'each other's' becomes rigid. Hijikata, too, tenses, his neck craning to look anywhere but the left half of his field of vision, all of a sudden very conscious of the human being with an odd white-perm beside him. In the moment after Katsura's dialogue, neither of the two men speaks nor seem to acknowledge the implications of 'two-player mode.'

No.

The shiver rippling down their necks, eliciting gooses bumps, is not caused by the dramatic-shoujo-wind-effect.

**Katsura: **"Oh, you might also want to hurry and fall in love. Your bodies in real life will starve if you take too long."

Yes.

"KAT_ZUUURA_!"

They both scream like, for the first time in their lives, they have realized they are actually magical girls who have long forgotten their true identities.

* * *

Thanks for reading to the end of chapter one! The ending was really meh in my opinion but I was rushing to produce this first chapter because I'm excited okay? ANYWAY I KNOW YOU PROBABLY SKIPPED MY A/N AT THE BEGINNING SO I'M SAYING THIS AGAIN NOW! **...Please review /sobs I can't get motivated to write if I think nobody reads this. **


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: **Please note that I will officially be starting the new semester this week, so I will probably be updating waaaay slower after this chapter! It may take up to weeks, a month, or months depending on my schedule. I hope you guys will still wait for me though! I swear I will deliver! And really, thank you to everyone who has reviewed thus far! I tried replying to them all, but a lot of you guys are not logged in so that can't be helped but I'll say thank you here! Love yall lots~

* * *

**And Hijikata Always Gives In First**

* * *

Amidst a room of high school students exchanging soft whispers and staring, inconspicuously but definitely staring, Hijikata and Gintoki stand with their backs toward each other, eyes wild, mouths squirming worms. The door slides open and then closes after a soft set of footsteps that goes unheard by both men.

Gintoki's cracked lips let out a humourless staccato laugh. His head gears toward his companion 'player' like a rusty cog, slow and disjointed.

_Me and Hijikata? _That_ mayora freak and Shinsengumi dog Hijikata? This is crazy—he's crazy—I'm gonna die. He's gonna fucking kill. Never in hell will I make a move on that mayonnaise-consuming, bat-shit crazy freak who has anger issues. And is that the teacher who just came in? He looks like Zura without hair. _

_Fuck, he's lookin' over here. Quit starin' you natural perm bastard. You don't even know how to follow up on a brat's love letter. I'm gonna fucking beat you to the ground and maul your dead body if you don't stop, you trash, diabetic hobo, nose-picking filth—UGH!_

"Quit starin', already! You wanna fucking die?" Hijikata turns himself to face Gintoki.

"Who's staring at whom? Why would I look at your ugly face?" Gintoki's downturn snarl hikes up into a playful smirk. "Oh, you think you're cute now?"

Hijikata jumps at the bait and whether he is aware of the fact or not, Gintoki does not care because it leads to the same end result. The temperamental Vice-Commander grabs a fistful of Gintoki's black blazer to pull him closer, his other fist draws back to gather the momentum of a punch to the face that should have been delivered long ago. "_You'll _be fucking cute once I'm finished with your face!"

Black, white, fist to nose, black, knee to gut, white. The two push and shove, fall and roll in the loud buzz of student bodies turning with gossip. Fingers and cellphones point toward the two throwing punches and insults at each other.

"Is that all you've got? I'll turn wrinkly before I become cute at this rate, Hijikata-_chan_," he taunts.

"This chair—" he hauls a nearby chair over his head and swings it down with a sharp trail of wind following behind, "—will give you the perfect makeover!"

The thump of wood against flesh, then the clatter of chair against linoleum leaves a pregnant pause hanging overhead.

* * *

"Um, Katsura-san, this is going nowhere," a joui comments from behind Katsura.

Katsura hums, staring thoughtfully at the monitor displaying the two captive men fighting.

"K-Katsura-san?" the joui prods after a lengthy silence.

"Gintoki's black eye indeed looks like smoky eye-shadow! Curse the Shinsengumi Vice-Commander; he can even do make-up now! But no matter how great your make-up skills are, I am the readers' favourite transvestite in the end!" he declares with proud laughter on his lips.

"Um," the joui looks pointedly between the monitor and Katsura, contemplating his next best course of action. He sighs, the greatest mystery of the universe, Katsura Kotarou, is too much for a single man to tackle.

* * *

Girls—doe-eyed, pink-cheeked, red-lipped, and hair every hue of the rainbow—break off from their cliques and scuttle to Gintoki and Hijikata's sides, holding arms and pushing chests.

"W-What's goin' on?" Hijikata averts his gaze from the nice image of a thoroughly beat up Gintoki, giving the girls holding onto his arms a fearful glance.

"Oi, oi, one at a time, ladies," Gintoki darts his head between the girls clinging to his arms and pushing his torso. "Wait, does this make me a pedophile? Oi, Hijikata-kun, am I a pedophile?"

"Don't think I'm done with you yet! And you were a loli-con from the start," Hijikata grunts, pulling his arms away from the girls who are gasping and mumbling strings of phrases to the same effect of 'Are you okay', 'Please stop fighting' and 'You should go see the nurse'.

When the girls do not cease their attempts to bother him, Hijikata begins to push his way through them, hard.

"I'm fine! I don't need to go to the nurse's office, okay! Leave me alone," he warns them before they make their way toward him again.

"Yeah, me too. You've had enough time touching Gin-san, now get off." Gintoki shoos them away with a deadpan expression. "Come back once you start looking like Kestuno Anna."

Once the unwilling girls have detached themselves from his arms, Hijikata kicks the chair that was used to assault Gintoki upright. Plopping down on the chair, his hand instinctively reaches into his breast pocket, searching for the familiar blunt edge of a cigarette carton. When his fingers leave empty, he curses.

"There has to be another way out," he states, and although he will not admit it, he says it more to console himself than to convince himself. "This is just a game, there has to be a way out."

Gintoki bolts up, a finger in the air and eyes wide with eagerness. "That's right! The quit button! Every game has a save and quit option!"

For a minute, an almost hopeful sheen glosses over Hijikata's eyes, but doubts prove overwhelming.

"Where?" he asks, waving a hand around their surroundings, "We're in a virtual reality. There's no sidebar or menu."

"Bullshit! You saw that Love Metre thing!" Gintoki shouts in response to Hijikata's scepticism. His hands rummage around synthesized fabric, pockets—breast pocket, back pockets—collars, cuffs, belt. "It has to be something like a cellphone or diary. Heck, even a watch will probably do."

Hijikata scratches the back of his neck, groaning at the flustered mess Gintoki is. "Look, it's obviously not a tangible object. Our best bet is goin' back home and see if anything happens."

Gintoki's initial reaction to 'goin' back home' is a quirked brow and a half-lidded gaze that Hijikata reads as an exasperated that's-what-I'm-tryna-do look. Only when Hijikata rolls him eyes to honour Gintoki the explanation that, by 'home' he meant the place all dating sims have to record the in-game days played, does Gintoki let out a knowing snicker.

"Of course, _of course_, Hijikata-kun would know." He struts over with an air of satirical sincerity, patting Hijikata on the shoulder.

"At least I'm getting us somewhere! Because you obviously know nothin' useful," Hijikata scoffs, a sneer upon his lips when he turns toward the door.

Gintoki narrows his eyes at Hijikata's retreating back and crinkles his lips in a pout that produces the vile aura of a middle-aged man in self-righteous denial that seem too always emit from the freelancer. He kicks his feet against the floor, trailing Hijikata out the door while grumbling words pertaining to the corruption of human society—derogatory to the police, if taken with innuendo, which Hijikata does. Although he chooses not to comment in favour of saving time. Precious time potentially away from a sickening sugar-addict that never ceases to poison his mind with incessant bullshit. But the telltale quivering in his shoulders and the clenching of his fists despite the lack of response is enough to bring a triumphant smirk onto Gintoki's feature. The rest of the trek down the stairs and out the front door is accompanied by Gintoki's glorious humming, arms thrown behind his head. They soon exit onto the path they had previously walked along after discovering their bodies—well, consciences—transported into this virtual world. So logically, they backtrack down this path, passing alleys and intersections, and naturally, the junction of the road that they first appeared on. This is when they realize their err in forethought.

"Hold on! There never was a fucking house!" Gintoki helpfully provides.

Hijikata shouts a chorus of colourful cusses, all the while banging his head on a nearby telephone pole.

"You were goddamn useless in the end, too! Goddamn mayora, useless cop, are you serious!"

"Shut the fuck up for a second and think about it! There has to be a house! How would the players sleep, I mean they have to pretend to sleep or somethin' to pass the day right? We can't just spend twelve hours in that school tryna hook up with girls! There has to be some progress tracking kinda thing."

"Yeah, very convincing coming from a guy who is bleeding from his head because of his stupidity!"

Hijikata rubs his palm against his forehead to come away wet with blood. A thought concerning the relation of in-game injuries to reality that should be given more attention to files through his mind without much digression. "Never mind the blood! Look for the damn house!"

In the event thereafter, the two continue to bark insults at each other as they run down to the end of _the_ road, which they have decided to name Main Street for convenience. When passing any intersections or alleyways, they made sure at least one of them checked them out to ensure every nook and cranny has been investigated. By the time the afternoon sun has moved across the sky to set beyond the horizon, Hijikata is panting with his hands on his knees and Gintoki is standing beside him, clutching onto his stomach. Hijikata lifts his head enough to greet the wall in front of them.

"No," a wheezing breath, "way," a hacking cough, "A dead," a furious shout, "_end!_

I fucking told you! There isn't any house!" Gintoki thumps the sole of his feet against the wall with each word, lividly seething.

At this point, Hijikata is too tired to argue with Gintoki. He simply slumps against the wall, a hand going through his blood-sticky hair. By now he is even considering the option of clearing the game with Gintoki because no matter how much he hates the guy and how disgusting this could be, he is the ultimate workaholic. Truth remains that at any moment, his Vice-Commander position could be usurped by a much anticipated First Unit Captain. Worst case scenario, he dies from starvation. _What a pathetic death that would be. _And before he could convince himself that no, team work does not exist with the perm head, although many would argue otherwise, his train of thought is cut off by a dramatic voice.

**Katsura: **"Ah, how boring. There's no development to this plot, at all! Who wrote this script? Director!"

Gintoki's eyes tune into the holographic text blob in front of them. He growls at the indignant tone that Katsura dares take, even in text. "I'm going to shave your head when I get out of here! Where is the quit button, tell me!"

**Katsura:** "Of course, there's no quit or save button. Did you really think I wouldn't see through such a simple loophole? And I removed the player's house because it was fun watching you guys run around screaming at each other (LOL). But that got boring fast. I'll return the house feature now, please get the drama started. Seeya. P.S. If you take too long, Leader will worry, Gintoki."

"Did you see that? He said not to make Kagura worry but he's the one who's causing a little girl to fend for herself!" Gintoki darts his head between the text blob and Hijikata's annoyed face, whose head is starting to throb now that the adrenaline has subsided.

A defeated breath escapes from Hijikata's lips, and he cradles his head with his hands.

"Can we just," he hesitates, tongue turning over the words in his mouth silently before he continues, "get this over with."

Gintoki's eyes blow apart, red irises wobbling in fervor to disagree, but one pointed glare from those cold, metal blue eyes that seem to pierce through his devised retort has him swallowing his complaints with mock disdain and arrogance.

"Fine, whatever. But even if your nasty personality and dog food addiction can't be fixed, do something about that head of yours," he mumbles in blasé tone, "I'll feel weird talking you up when you have blood dripping down your head. It's like…necrophilia, you know?"

"Shut up, Sadist No. 2."

"The difference between No. 1 and No. 2 is like heaven and earth! I'm nothing as fucked up as your Sadist Prince!"

* * *

If you guys really think about it, Gintoki cares about Hijikata a lot. Like seriously he's always butting into his affairs and helping him out and just being nosy. Well to be fair, Gintoki cares about everyone except himself, my baby. But yeah, don't you also think that Hijikata is always the first one to relent in their arguments and fights? Although I could spend the rest of this series making them argue like the typical everyday canon, but then we'll get nowhere so I had Zura intervene. ANYWAY, thanks for reading leave a review m'kay?


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **Gomen. GOMEEEN. Like please accept my liver as compensation for my forever late update. This chapter was a bitch to write cuz it was like 10 times going on at once. I don't even know what's important and what's not anymore. Please help. Please review. Please talk to me. I'm lonely and crying and in need of ginhiji anime moments.

* * *

**A Teacher's Words Are to Be Hailed**

* * *

Not tall, but sturdy and wide: two identical homely units of white plaster and red rooftops, two identical dark cherry wooden doors—encompassed by a low porch, propped up on a pair of sleek wooden pillars—and two similarly-clothed high school men, panting and bleeding and glimmering in a sheen of sweat. Gintoki winces when he thinks how stupid that probably looks with the red sun in the background fading out into a gradient scene of purple and pink hues.

"Well, I'm definitely not feeling that excitement I thought would come with finding the house," he muses, dragging his numb legs forward. He steps onto the porch of the unit on the right.

Hijikata clicks his tongue. "Whatever," he climbs onto the porch of the remaining unit, hand reaching for the copper doorknob.

Gintoki follows Hijikata's lead and turns the doorknob. The door creaks ajar with little effort, revealing a staircase on the right and a spacious flat beyond it. A quick glance takes in a neatly furnished kitchen area at the far left with two islands partitioning its respective adjacent sides. With a short breath, a delighted whistle rolls out Gintoki's pursed lips.

"Now, isn't this fancy. Is it really alright for Gin-san to have this place all to himself?" he asks despite having no intentions of leaving the place regardless of what anyone may say to him now. "Well, this is a game. It's definitely fine for a player to put this place to good use."

Bracing one hand on the wall to his left, Gintoki kicks off his shoes before rounding out of the doorway. Right around the wall is a television set and a black leather couch placed a few paces in front of it. Gintoki's eyes sparkle at the sight of the matte leather, noting the large window allowing the perfect view of the sunset to the right of the couch. Without much thought, he finds his legs bringing him toward the welcoming seat and knocking him down onto the cool leather.

His throat makes an approving sound at the feeling. "If only they would feed me. Then I'd have no reason to leave this place."

When he doesn't hear a reply, he remembers that Hijikata is probably somewhere in the house next door. A lethargic sound grumbles from the depth of his throat and he considers falling asleep right there, half sprawled out on the couch.

Of course, he does.

* * *

Ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent of the time, Sakata Gintoki would not, under any circumstance other than to devoutly watch a Ketsuno Ana weather report, wake up _and _rise with the sun. Well, admittedly, this is the afternoon sun he is blearily stirring awake to, but the statement holds. The afternoon sunlight probing in through the window attached its long range of burning UV-rays on the matte leather where Gintoki lies, hanging off every edge of the couch. The sun against his face as he sleeps would not bother him enough to physically get up and remove himself, but the black leather has absorbed the heat so single-mindedly that Gintoki is starting to feel the skin on his bones boil.

It is with a shout and a kick that Gintoki peels off the couch and walks to the kitchen.

"Seriously, whose idea was it to skip the curtains in the design process?" He slides a lazy hand through every cupboard and drawer, yawning and not finding a thing in any of the fancy pantry.

He really should have investigated the refrigerator first, but when he goes to search through it, it's empty too.

"Yeah, also, why bother with a kitchen if there is NO food," he shouts as he slams the refrigerator door.

"And why am I talking to myself." With a sigh he struts across the living room area and into the short corridor where he left his shoes strewn across the entryway.

_Time to see what the bastard is up to._ He slips on his shoes and scratches behind his ear. There was no key or lock to the door, so he leaves the door shut and crosses over the bare, undivided yard onto Hijikata's side of property. He heads straight for the door, confident that the door is unlocked just like his own. A little push gets it to open, and he trots through the door unabashed.

"Hey, you here?" he calls out at the doorway.

When he hears no response, he pokes his head around the wall and into the living room. The whole place is empty from window to kitchen. He looks to the right and peers up from the staircase.

_Must be up there._

He doesn't bother leaving his shoes at the door, rationalizing that this is a game, the roads are probably not dirty, and even if they were this isn't his own house so it's okay. The steps don't creak, and the only sound in this place is the noise of Gintoki's little finger digging in his ear. At the top of the stairs is a corridor leading into two rooms. One of the doors to the rooms is open and shows an empty, unmade bed. _Okay, so he was here._

That leaves the closed door at the end of the corridor. He reaches for the doorknob and turns it. Gintoki only did it because he bet himself that certainly, this door had to be unlocked too. When the door swings aside and he sees Hijikata's scornful frown and the malicious glint to his steely gaze, he wishes that he had either one: not opened the door, or two: done so with more theatrics.

"There are many things I could say to you right now, one thing being can you not recognize a closed door and respect that? Or is even a thing called knocking new to you?" he seethes the last part through quaking breaths, but otherwise not sounding half as mad as a mayora at its worst.

"Too late if you're asking me that now," Gintoki shrugs, his expression void of any emotion. "But really, what are you doing holed up in the washroom if you're not taking a shit."

Hijikata glances down at the arrangement of bloody gauzes, bandages and antiseptics he has littered around himself. "This fucking hole won't close up. It's pissin' me off."

Gintoki looks at the mirror and sure enough, the other side of Hijikata's face is dribbling blood. Nothing as serious as yesterday when it was still fresh and filthy, but the fact that the wound still hasn't healed is a bit worrying, even for an undead demon Vice-Commander.

"You're pathetic," Gintoki scoffs, "Who's actually dumb enough to smash his head against a pole."

"Shut up, I've seen you do worse," Hijikata grumbles. He flicks the tap on to wash the blood off his face.

Gintoki's murky red eyes light up with a recent memory, a fit of giggles already starting to swell in his diaphragm. "Yo, hear this," he starts gesturing animatedly. "One time Shinpachi got a nasty pimple on his forehead, and when Kagura popped it for him, blood gushed from his head for a whole half an hour. It was as thick as your stream of blood just now. _So_ gross."

Hijikata clicked his tongue, head still under the running tap. When he lifts his head, rivulets of water travel down his chin and nose. He extends an arm blindly to search for the towel he remembers tossing somewhere. Once his fingertips brush against cotton, he pulls the towel towards his face to scrub his skin and then ruffle his hair. After drying most of himself off, he turns to Gintoki and sends him an unamused look, a brow quirked and a sneer taunting his lips.

Gintoki reels back half a step. "Uh, if you want me to help you with your head, the answer is no—"

The wet cotton towel whips against Gintoki's nose the second 'no' leaves his lips.

"Where! Where in the text above did you get the idea that I need your help?" Hijikata barks in Gintoki's face, the towel coming around to whip his head once more because no, the first whip was not hard enough.

"Oi! Stop!" Gintoki reaches to snatch the towel out from Hijikata's grasp before he can deliver the next strike. "It's 'cause you're a violent asshole that nobody wants to help you, for fuck's sake."

"Well, everyone in Edo knows your 'help' does more harm than good," Hijikata shoves Gintoki hard when he passes him to leave the washroom. "I'm done here."

"Yeah, go die from blood-lost for all I care."

"Just shut up and move already," Hijikata calls from the corridor.

"Tsk. It's just my luck to be stuck with you."

* * *

"So," side-by-side with hands clasped atop plastic desks, the two men stare straight ahead, a shadow of many apprehensions darkening their forward gazes. "What, exactly, are we supposed to do again?"

"You know. This and that." Hijikata clears his throat. "The normal stuff."

"And I'm asking you what 'this and that' normal stuff is!" Gintoki's knee hits the underside of his little prison of a desk, knocking it two centimetres off the floor before it rattles back to the floor.

"This!" Hijikata jabs a thumb at the couple conversing at length behind him. "That!" He points to a couple in the corner of the classroom, exchanging wrapped and tied gift boxes. "You spent a whole arc competing at a dating stimulation game _tournament_ and you're asking me?"

"Don't bring that up! That was totally different, okay? That was a trap, any man would fall for it. Gin-san was the victim, you see," he spreads his arms wide in a posture of offering.

"I have no idea what the fuck you're saying," Hijikata sighs, icy blue gaze darting around the room. "But really, how do we even _buy_ stuff?"

Gintoki, gladly accepting the change in topic, turns to eyeball the still figure at the front of the room. The teacher—the bald Zura—stands with a slight smile plastered on his face, empty eyes unfocused. He doesn't even blink once in the time Gintoki spends observing him from his seat by the window.

"Hey, you know that bald guy up there kinda looks like your classic Nintendo NPC who is like, your start-game guide? Let's talk to him," Gintoki says, already getting up.

"Huh?" Hijikata gives the teacher a scrutinizing glare and then looks back to Gintoki. "I didn't get a word you just said, but okay, he looks out of place."

Gintoki stalks up to the NPC and waves his hand in front of its face. "Hey, teach. Can you tell us how and where to buy gifts?"

"Or how to earn money," Hijikata adds in afterthought.

The NPC continues staring into the unfocused distance when he recites, "You must first befriend a classmate who will introduce you to a part-time job. Once you find a job, you will level-up and unlock the gift store down the road where you can spend your daily wages on various items."

"Oh, it's that place we saw before then," he recalls the memory where he stubs all his toes against an invisible wall.

"Alright, young lady," Gintoki spins on his heels, one hand cradling his head while his other stretches out to point at the nearest NPC. In his host club 'just do it,' voice, he asks, "How would you like to be Gin-san's friend."

The NPC bats her eyes a total of two seconds in Gintoki's direction before turning her body away from him in undiluted rejection. She crosses her arms, holds her nose into the air, and pouts. "Huh? You want to be friends with me? It's not going to be easy."

"Yeah, good luck with that," Hijikata sneers with a backhand wave.

Gintoki's righteous smile doesn't falter but widens a little more with confidence. "You just watch. Gin-san's specialty is the tsundere type. Love Choriss arc can prove that!"

He traces his steps back to his desk, third row from the front—two seats from the left, and angles himself to face the occupant of the desk directly to the right of his. The fact that occupant is male soothes Hijikata's nerves somewhat; it is an unwritten trivia that Hijikata Toshirou cannot socialize with the female species.

He clears his throat once to catch the NPC's attention. The NPC lifts his head from his cellphone and regards Hijikata analytically, seeming as if he were searching his programming for interactive instructions for male players. That look unsettles Hijikata.

He gets straight to the point, "Yo, I'm Hijikata Toshiro. I'll like to be your friend."

The brown-haired NPC scratches the back of his head and laughs. _Oh, god, he's that kind of character._ "Sure, I'll be your friend. I'm Tomoda."

"Ah, thanks. So um," Hijikata coughs into his fist awkwardly, "do you know where I could possibly find a job?"

"Oh, well I might, but…" Tomoda scratches the back of his neck and peers up at Hijikata through his side-swept bangs, gaze hollow. "We're not really that close."

Hijikata's brow twitches. He feels his eyelids falling into a perpetual darkness, hoping that when they finally do blink apart, the world is again filthy and polluted and missing one jouishishi by the name of Katsura Kotarou. But it isn't.

Hijikata narrows his eyes and says, in a voice deadpan and very much like the official voice he uses when he deals with the public as the Shinsengumi Vice-Commander, "I'll buy you any one thing you want after."

"My uncle owns a bakery and is looking for help," Tomoda answers without a breath of hesitation. _So much for friendship._ "Just head straight down the road, you can't miss it. I'll be looking forward to your first paycheck!"

"Yeah, I'll bet."

Hijikata passes a glance towards Gintoki's direction. Gintoki is still trying in vain to garner the friendship of the tsundere NPC. Hijikata sighs to himself, making his way to the door. Gintoki must have seen him sneaking out from his peripheral because he shouts, "Oi, where you going?"

"To work," he looks over his shoulder and smirks.

"What kinda underhanded tricks did you pull, you government dog?" Gintoki huffs, chest stuck out in front of him. "Seriously, what kinda loser did you befriend, ah? That guy picking his nose over there?"

"You're the only loser who picks his nose!"

"Save your straight-man lines."

"Fine. I'm leavin'."

He leaves the classroom, winding down the flight of stairs and through the front gates. Only when he is alone and away from the diversion called Yorozuya, does he allow the fact that he has been captured by his nemesis sink in. And no, not only has he been captured, but he is being threatened to play a dating simulation for his nemesis' entertainment. Hijikata doesn't even want to begin calculating the amount of chaos—and paperwork—accumulating at the headquarters. It isn't even that he doesn't trust Kondo and the men, but when there is forever-scheming Okita plus an air-head stalker plus a missing Vice-Commander, things are bound to be go into the fire. Not to mention, the Katsura faction must have a plan boiling in the pits somewhere. Actually, there is also the problem with Gintoki's kids—they (Kagura) will definitely break into every home in Kabukicho to search for the missing perm head. Though he really doubted that the useless bum never went missing once or twice anyway.

Hijikata kicks at the fake pavement and produces a groan from the deepest bellies of hell. _The only thing I can do now is to suffocate the Yorozuya with gifts and end this game soon._

He notices a store on Main Street that wasn't there before and comes face-to-face with a painted sign that reads quite frankly: Bakery.

He pushes the glass door open, the tiny bell chiming where it hangs at the top.

"Excuse me, I'm Tomoda's friend. I heard you got a job opening here."

A middle-aged man pokes out form the curtain dividing the kitchen and the front of the house. He smiles, eyes wrinkling into seamless lines.

"Ah, welcome. I've been waiting for you." He wipes his hands on his apron. "Come here. I'll show you what I need help with."

Hijikata nods, stepping toward the counter at the front.

"I can handle the cooking. I really just need someone to fetch the baked goods from the kitchen and arrange them on the display. Also the regular cashier stuff, you know?" he explains as he points to the empty display and the cash register.

"Yeah, I can do that," Hijikata nods again.

"Good. You can start now. I'll pay you after every shift."

The owner returns to the kitchen, only to come out again with a plate of steaming buns and cookies instead. Hijikata takes the plate and slides it into a near-by cooling rake. It takes some time for him to find a pair of tongs, but when he does, he gets busy filling the display case in sections.

It's some time later that the owner comes back out to inspect the half-emptied display case and the fuller cash register.

"Good job on your first day," he comments with a smile. "Here's fifty Monopoly™ dollars."

_M-Monopoly™ dollars? Oi, is this okay? It even has the trademark sign attached to it! And dollars? We're using American currency?_

"Uh, thanks. I guess, I'll be back tomorrow."

"Sure, come by any time you want."

Hijikata pockets the money and ducks out of the store. When his feet come two steps away from the bakery, a gust of sparkles and gold dust pixelates the air around him. A translucent hologram appears in front of him, displaying the words "Congratulations. You have leveled up." A twirling blue cursor bobs up and down at the bottom right corner. Hijikata extends a tender finger to tap at it.

"You now have access to the gift store and a new function has awarded to you. You have obtained the menu function where you have access to information like the time, your money, and a list of NPC/player information. Please take time to familiarize yourself with the interface and its functions."

Hijikata taps the cursor once more and the dialogue bubble disappears to display a milky white interface with the time flashing on the top left corner. At the centre is a row of commands: Wallet, Cellphone, and NPC/Player info. He hovers his fingers over the wallet command and the interface displays a dashed outline of a rectangle with a plus sign in the middle. Hijikata assumes this is where he's supposed to tap his money into place. He takes the bills from his pocket and aligns it with the rectangle. The cash pixelates and is immersed into the interface. To the side of the rectangle is now a number displaying the money Hijikata has collected. A new negative sign appears at the top. He assumes that is how he will withdraw money.

His finger glides over the back button and it takes him back to the home menu. This time he taps into the NPC/Player command, prompting a list of names and faces segregated into two categories: Players and NPCs. There are only two names and faces under the 'Players.' Hijikata taps at his own name and he sees a map pinpointing his location, an assigned cellphone number, and a status bar that blinks 'Online.'

Tracing the back button one step backwards, he taps on Gintoki's name and scans the information displayed. Status: Working; location: Hana's Flowers; Cellphone number: 111-222-332—Hijikata hovers his index finger over the cellphone number and the interface morphs into a dialing screen.

The following message appears: "Unable to connect. This player has not unlocked this function yet."

Hijikata figures his next best course of action should be keeping his promise and buying that any-one-thing he owes Tomoda. He checks into Tomoda's location and sees that he is still in the school building. Hijikata returns to the school building, finding his new friend holed up in the classroom staring at his phone.

"Hey, Tomoda," Hijikata calls to get his attention. "I got my paycheck. What do you want?"

Tomoda smiles and flashes a thumbs up. "Then I'll take the new Dokeman SuperMega."

_This game's one rip-off after another. _"Okay, be right back then."

* * *

Even in a virtual reality, one cannot escape the filthy truth that coils the core of human hearts. This virtual reality is, after all, an alternative reality created by humans, made to resemble the mainstream world that humans dwell in. It should not come as a surprise, then, that in this mirror reality the structure of human ecosystem mirrors that of the real world. The price of the quick and dirty route in life will always be expensive.

"WHY? Why does this dumb version of Pokemon cost me my whole fucking paycheck!"

Hijikata clutches the thin case of Dokeman SuperMega in his quaking hands.

"Ah? What's that? I thought I heard something about a dirty cop resorting to bribery to get through level one."

Hijikata whips his head around in time to catch a certain natural-perm's vengeful smirk riding at the peak of its time.

He gnaws at his lips and growls, "Shut the fuck up and die."

* * *

After labouring hours between minute naps and nonexistent social lives outside of their respective flower and bakery shop, the two have managed to exchange bi-daily gifts in the form of parfaits and mayonnaise bottles. In a highly productive span of sixty virtual hours, they have found out that a cheaper equivalent to the aforementioned gifts are low-grade chocolates and candy cigarettes. With insurmountable effort and routine, each of their Love Metres have filled up to an impressive twenty percent mark.

But this is where their problem lies.

"WHY? Why doesn't this dumb metre move past the twenty mark!" Gintoki shrieks with his hand pulling at the roots of his forever knotted hair.

Hijikata fiddles with the pack of candy cigarettes in his palm, glaring at the guilty Love Metre floating translucently in front of him. "Is it 'cause we keep getting the same thing?"

"So I'm supposed to give you parfaits instead now?" Gintoki raises the tall glass of strawberry parfait in his hand. "What's the logic behind that, ah?"

"I don't know then!" Hijikata redirects his glare Gintoki's way. Gintoki just continues to ramble on with himself, being the overly-dramatic thing that he is. Hijikata rolls his eyes. "This is wasting our time. To begin with we're only allowed to give each other two gifts a day before they stop giving points."

"We've spent almost three whole days trapped in this game and we've only progressed about twenty percent!" Gintoki throws up his hands, parfait and all.

"Well you don't really have anything to worry about. You know, since your dining table is almost always empty," Hijikata pauses for effect, "and you don't gotta job."

"I contest to all of the above!"

"Yeah, well I contest to your contesting!"

"Then I contest to your contesting my contestin—Wait no! Stop! Now's not the time for this!"

Hijikata has no choice but to grunt in agreement to that. He drags a tired hand down his face, muffling the words, "Let's ask the teacher in class. He might know something."

Gintoki nods and they both dash for the school. Shoulder to shoulder, they bound up the stairs and into the classroom, eyes locking onto the balding figure implanted before the blackboard. Gintoki's mouth alone is sufficient in belching out the question, teetering the words around bated breaths. When the question is out, the teacher tilts his head in a slight manner of dainty condescension, his eyes focusing on the two in front of him for the first time. His smile lifts into a steeper incline.

"Well, isn't that because you two haven't passed the first name basis yet?"

Hijikata's lips purse like he has eaten the powder in ten packets of sour key candy, eyes snapping shut in an attempt of his to once again block out the visible world and the horrors it belies.

Gintoki, being the sadist that he is, is not loath to grab a fistful of the teacher's final strands of grey hair, lips sputtering, "Isn't this a bit too soon, oi? We're only at twenty percent—that's only two out of ten doki doki hearts in terms of doki doki hearts! What kind of western system is this game running on, ah?"

"Don't call it doki doki anything!" Hijikata might have shouted in the background of Gintoki's rant.

The teacher, arrested in Gintoki's unyielding grasp, utters with absolute conviction, "Well, isn't that because you haven't passed the first name basis yet?"

"Don't just repeat what you said!"

* * *

lol at the very ill-fitting jobs I've given the two of them. Okay, maybe a flower shop au with gin would be cute and all, but bakery hiji lololol kill me.

I really should have them stop yelling and stalling and wasting words on this page but I can't. Why.

Please review, it fuels me. bang bang. out.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN:** It's um, been a good while. Listen, LISTEN. I had a legitimate excuse. I got a job, and I was working almost full time at first because they desperately needed me. I was NEEDED. But yeah. Nothing new there. i'M STILL LAZY TRASH IN THE END. Peace out.

* * *

**The Best Relationships Are Free, Except Those Do Not Exist**

* * *

"Then I'll let you start off," Gintoki releases his hold on the teacher, turning his idle half-lidded eyes toward Hijikata.

"No." Hijikata imagines the lower lip he is gnawing on is the butt of a cigarette.

"Think about the little China girl you're starving by being difficult," Gintoki tuts, shaking his head.

"Fuck if I'm being difficult! You start then, since your kid is starving."

"No, no, no. I'm only good at following up. You go."

"I'm the follow-up champion! And your kid is dying, take some initiative!"

"I already told you, that I'll follow up your weak ass name game!"

"You—"

"Okay, fine! Toshi-kun, is that good enough for you? No? Toshi-chan? Toshi-_rou_—" That last one earned him a fist to the nose, but Gintoki can't say he wasn't expecting it. Which is why, again, he insisted on following because he knew himself well enough to know that he is not someone who starts anything off on a serious tone. It doesn't help that their relationship dictates absolute humiliation of each other.

"Aah? What was your name again? Sakata Something Ass_fuck_?" Hijikata removes his fist from Gintoki's nose to grab a fistful of his permy hair, using that as leverage as he pounds the thick skull of Gintoki's repeatedly against the chalkboard.

Between the bloody intervals of the pull versus push, Gintoki's lips sputter a chatter of noise, "Oi—Ow, stop—Hiji—Tou—Stop, 'm sowie—Sorry, I'm sorry! My name is Gintoki, fuck _stop_ already!"

"Huh? Gintoki Fuck-Stop?" Hijikata looms his shadowed, Trademark Demon Vice-Commander 100% Annihilation glare above Gintoki's swelling forehead that he has held strategically below his line of sight.

Gintoki's lips twitch nervously at Hijikata's dilated pupils, peering more than a little too close for comfort. "J-Just Gintoki is good."

"Well, my name is Toshirou, but that's Toshirou-sama to you, Fuckertoki," Hijikata takes pleasure in scrambling Gintoki's brain to the enunciation of each seethed word.

"T-Toshirou-sama is a bit long, so I think Toshi-kun will do," Gintoki's voice breaks in reminiscence of prepubescent tribulations. "By the way, it's Gintoki."

"Yeah, and it's still Toshi-sama to you."

* * *

Between the slivers of layered turquoise, emeralds, and spring limes stemming off assorted rouges and purples, a dark silhouette drifts into view from crescent windows to almond eyeholes. Gintoki only happened to catch the sight of the sun-glared shadow when he turned to pick out a bouquet of red tulips. Picking up a batch of freshly misted tulips, he watched the figure float into his open view.

He sets the tulips on the wrapping counter, splaying dewdrops across wood-patterned plaster.

"Oh, Toshi-kun, where ya goin'?" he drapes his upper body against the top of the counter, knocking his knuckles against the front face.

The silhouette jolts, pausing in acknowledgment before it turns, and reroutes to the colourful storefront of Hana's Flowers, the afternoon sun fading behind its outline with each long stride, until only a narrow ring of gold halos the tight pull of pale skin against symmetric jawlines.

Gintoki's thoughts wander into the region of maybe-I-shouldn't-be-thinking-this, finding himself once again noticing how the high definition CG effects is illuminating the infamous Demon Vice-Commander in a deceptively demure, and very shoujo-esque, manner.

"You're seriously becoming infected by the otome vibe right now," Gintoki realizes he is speaking before speech is being registered. "Where has your testosterone gone?"

Like a trick of light—and Gintoki convinces himself that it was—the spell breaks, and the fire-breathing, trident-wielding Hijikata usurps the shoujo illusion and in causation, slays the nervous tingling in the palms of Gintoki's hands.

"What the fuck? Says the guy who is surrounded by flowers and wearing a floral pink apron!" Now fully aware again, Gintoki can hear the next retort rolling off Hijikata's tongue before he even opens his mouth. If their five hundred chapters of trifling banters haven't yet equated to anything plot wise, Gintoki can say that one thing he did acquire is an extrasensory—or more like hyper sensitivity—to incoming angry retorts. And, _Yeah, I really shouldn't have wandered that way,_ "What do you even mean by otome vibe? I'm wearing the same school uniform you're wearing under your apron."

According to Gintoki's fight or flight instinct, he is feeling three hundred percent flight.

"Forget it," he flips his hand to the topic, "You're going to the gift store, right? Wait for me."

"Yeah, right. Why do I have to wait for you," Hijikata turns back down the road, pulling the sunlight after his silhouetted backline. Yet, despite his words, his footsteps fall two steps shorter than his regular stride.

Gintoki quickly organizes the handful of tulips he left on the counter into an even distribution, wrapped at the stems with a loose sheets of cellophane and then bound again with thick ribbons. He tucks the bouquet into one of the many pails lined along the walls.

"Owner, I'm off!" his shout is muffled beneath the apron he is shrugging over his head.

A middle-aged woman walks out from the staff room, holding an envelope in her hands. "Here, you go. Thank you for the good work."

The second the envelope is in his grasp, Gintoki bolts out the door with footfalls chasing the elongated shadow skewing to the sky's whim. Right foot pounds on the narrow head, left foot catches the left elbow, the moving flicker of light between the lanky legs, the left shin, to finally emerge from the wavering black fluid and fill the vacant spot on Hijikata's right, painting the pavement behind him with an equally dark fluid.

Diverging off Main Street and onto a junction before the intersection where their homes are, they find themselves standing before the gift store.

"Granny," Hijikata leans over the counter and calls into the compact unit shelved with typical convenience store junk food plus a range of odd miscellaneous, "A choco—"

"—A Strawberry Parfait Deluxe," Gintoki corrects.

"So this is why you came running like a kid," Hijikata sighs. "And no, I'm not gonna waste money on your deluxe parfait. Chocolate is fine."

"Look, aren't you trying to court me? Aren't you being a bit stingy?" Gintoki brushes past Hijikata, pointing his index finger to the picture of a Strawberry Parfait Deluxe, obstinately repeating, "A Strawberry Parfait Deluxe, please."

"And aren't _we_ trying to clear this stupid game pronto? Then once we get back you can have _real_ parfaits." Hijikata circles his fingers around Gintoki's index, crushing the digit in his fist. "A chocolate, please."

"Thanks for your concern, but the truth is this is as real as it gets for me. Basically free parfaits that basically taste the same as real life parfaits, but basically free and I can eat this virtual parfait five times a day," the logic seems sound to Gintoki at least, so he _will_ have that first parfait of the day straight out of Hijikata's loaded wallet. "Basically, yeah, a Strawberry Parfait Deluxe. And that's final."

"_Basically_, you've been _wasting_ your fucking money on _five_ parfaits a day! Mother fucker," Hijikata takes Gintoki by the back of his collar, pulling him off of the counter and away from the storefront as much as possible. He drops him a safe distance away from the owner, "Stop," Hijikata shoves a palm against Gintoki's chest. "Stop, time out," he points at the very much confused store owner, "We need to hold an emergency meeting."

"Um," Gintoki starts nervously, a hand twitching to peel the intrusive palm off his chest.

"Don't," Hijikata cuts him off before he can begin to cause another headache. "How much money do you have left in total?"

Gintoki raises the hand holding the envelope he got from today's work. "Fifty dollars?"

"Fifty—" Hijikata forces himself to pause, to calm down, to count to _one, I can do this, two, being Vice Commander of a stalker boss has taught me to live through public shaming, three, I can do this—_ "Fuck. I can't. I can't anymore. Someone kill this idiot for me, please, I'll give you a new job, a new home, and a new boss."

"Ah, ah, the Vice Commander has lost it," Gintoki, with his uncaring half-lidded eyes and bored tone, is appearing too much like a certain sadistic Shinsengumi captain, making the blood boil twice as furiously in Hijikata's veins. "The plan was to slave away the first couple days and hoard up the cash so we won't have to waste time worrying 'bout money later!"

"Hey, don't sweat the details. I'll just go play with flowers every day and earn fifty plus. I mean it's not like we can do much else much exchange gifts anyway right?" He waves his hand noncommittedly.

"Once we level up again, I'll betcha we will need more money!" But against those dead eyes, Hijikata knows the other doesn't care anymore than he did before. "Whatever, I don't care what you do with your money anymore. Just have enough for my daily gifts."

Gintoki's gaze regains a tad of vigor, the most they will ever display in any given time, at the dismissal. "Roger! Now, that we've decided, it'll be a Strawberry Parfait Deluxe."

"Uh, no, you'll be paying for your parfait. I'm only gonna get you the chocolate."

"Well, then, it'll be a Strawberry Parfait Deluxe and a box of candy cigarettes, preferably one that has been eaten through by rats."

"God fucking dammit—"

Packages are taken, off shelves and into gift boxes, money is passed through hands, and gifts are received, into hands and out of boxes—the extraneous material (torn wrappings, empty boxes, curly ribbon) flitter away in a dissolving ascension of pixels. With a parfait and a chocolate bar in hand for Gintoki and a carton of cigarette candy for Hijikata, an iridescent gust of dust glimmering off the harsh sunlight flushes against the contours of their body, licking a warm draft across exposed skin.

The flurry of colour, of light, lulls to a serene cloud of reflective glitter, lingering to the background of two new holographic textboxes. "Congratulation, you've reached Level 2. A Map has been added to your Menu."

With the light and dust out of his eyes, Gintoki pries his eyes open to more than their mere cracks. In the time he takes to digest the message, a new line of text appears: "You now have access to 'Campground 1.'"

Gintoki flicks a nail at the spinning dial to the bottom right of the message, dismissing the blurb. "So we've levelled up again?"

"Looks like it," Hijikata grunts from his search through the Menu, finding the newly added Map at the end of the row of commands. A tap pulls up the map to display an outline of the current in-game routes. The map illustrates the Main Street, and its known sub-streets, leading to the school. That and the block where Gintoki and Hijikata live on are the only area coloured in on the map, signifying visit history. Behind the school property is a shaded out trail winding up into a greyscale mountain. Hovering a finger above its peak, a label forms above his fingertip. "It says 'Campground 1' is behind the school."

"Oh, this is that, isn't it?" Gintoki circles his finger around the mountain. "Annual field trip."

"Probably, yeah."

"Guess we're checking it out."

"Obviously."

"Then let's finish round two of gift exchange before we go."

* * *

"Actually, aren't these plot based situations event triggered?"

They have found their way into the school courtyard. The sun has set a good portion, leaving only a jagged wedge of dim light vivid between square-cut corners of the school buildings. The sun is too low to make out much of the courtyard besides the prominent cherry blossom tree planted in the centre and the few benches decorated around the perimeter of the yard.

"Doesn't really, matter. We'll just camp out here." Hijikata stalks around the wide cherry blossom trunk, eyes focused up toward the dense pink petals overlapping branch upon branch. No one can really blame him for staring, really, any native Japanese citizen would find himself admiring the cherry blossoms in full bloom, even in a dark (virtual) night like this one. With that logic, no one can really blame Hijikata for stumbling over a misguided step on a somewhat round, thin, uneven part of the pavement that happens to move and make '_crack_' sounds. The shriek is just collateral, "Ga-aah! Shit!"

Hijikata rights himself before he can fall any closer to the ground. "What was that!"

"What! What is it?" Gintoki slouches around the thick tree frame, eyes perked with curiosity. "By the way, you just squealed."

"Um, it's a nice night out?" The moving pavement, or rather, the moving foot, retracts into the chest of its owner. Perched on the roots of the tree is a teenaged boy with a too-bright smile. He tilts his head up to level Hijikata with an expectant glance.

Hijikata recognizes the smothering cheer emitting from the teen. Disgruntling sounds whisper between the rhetoric remark, "Tomoda… Is being a NPC a 24/7 job?"

"Yeah, and I don't get paid, so um. Hijikata, I'd appreciate it if you replace what you broke," Tomoda coughs, cradling the two halves of his 3DS in his hands.

"Are you fucking shitting me!" Hijikata can anticipate another head wound to add to the count. "I'm no NPC, give me a break!"

"Oi, oi, relax." Gintoki comes around to place a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "It'll be fine, right? Just buy the guy a new 3DS like any good kid would. But just remember to have enough for my share of chocolates tomorrow; those game consoles are expensive."

Hijikata misses the days when he could feed the useless perm's face with his fists and the gravest consequence would be looking like a psychotic maniac for five minutes. Because he is supposedly 'courting' the scumbag, Hijikata can't beat him half dead without the Love Metre's points depleting into nothingness (he's tried). So now, he's stuck dealing with Gintoki's constant shit _and still_ looking like an asylum runaway.

"So, Tomoda-kun, do you happen to know where this campground is?" Gintoki settles with silently smirking in Hijikata's face. If he were to further provoke the man and a fist fight breaks out again, their hard earned points will flash into the negatives in a breath.

Tomoda shifts his gaze toward his feet. "And you are? Sorry, but I don't have anything to say to a stranger."

_Oh._

Gintoki has dealt with a lot of ego thrashing from a great number of people, some he admits are well deserved, but never has he had to hear it from a virtual, an irrelevant pixel character. The fibres of his skin cells are twitching with a convulsing desire to do a mixture of many sadistic practices and violence via words. At the Mach speed his neurons are running, and the many obscenities his lips are trying to spew at once, he is beginning to look like a Magikarp out of water. Using Splash.

_But, oh. Okay. _

Seeing this, even the Demon Vice-Commander—especially the Demon Vice-Commander—can't stop the thundering laughter rolling off his tongue. "That's right. People who haven't paid the price to friendship have no right to speak."

_Not okay!_

"F-Fucking pretty boy!" Gintoki stomps his foot down between Tomoda's thigh, toes a millimetre and a half from smashing a pair of precious metal into sacred jewel shards. With salt in his voice and dirt in his eyes, Gintoki reels the unresisting NPC up to eye level by the collar. "I'm a playable character, okay? I'm the fucking protagonist, the most original of the original, you hear? Fucking mob characters can go get their balls ripped off by okama for all I care."

"Let's be real. Not much of this series is original," Hijikata makes a valid point.

"No, no. I'm original in the way that I converge popular themes. We're like the first to have ever done that, you know? It's a pioneer idea! We're original! Uniquely original!"

"You know you have some insecurity issues when you have to emphasize original more than twice," yet another valid point. "Anyway, let him go. I'll do this."

Gintoki grunts, complies, and releases his hold on the unreactive NPC after another dirty look and an irate growl, still insisting that he is more than pure originality.

"So, you have any idea how to get to the campground, Tomoda?" Hijikata asks in Gintoki's stead.

That smouldering cheer and sunshine again, "Yeah. You can only get there by the school bus, though. We only get to ride the school bus for school trips. You should talk to the teacher if you're interested."

"Alright, thanks." _Another wasted day._

"Oh, and, my 3DS—"

"I get it! I get it! I'll replace it!" Because agreeable relationships are beneficial as proven.

* * *

The sun is hanging bright; today is a new day. And today is the day Hijikata's wallet takes a three digit loss. Current balance: fifty Monopoly™ dollars.

The most painful part of it all is that Hijikata has to live with the knowledge that his financial statement is equal to Gintoki's.

* * *

Hijikata walks into the classroom to find a full class, every student sitting in their seats unlike their usual carefree love-making priorities. Gintoki himself is sitting properly in his chair and with his feet touching the floor.

"Hey, c'mere hurry," Gintoki waves Hijikata over, gesturing for him to take his seat too. "It's starting."

Hijikata slides into place beside Gintoki. "What is?"

"Ahem," if not for this moment, Hijikata would have thought the teacher is unable to initiate speech unless spoken to first. "It's finally that time of the year. We'll be having our annual camping trip soon. Anyone who wants to partake in this event must pay me one hundred Monopoly™ dollars by tomorrow. Once I've collected everyone's fees, I'll further inform you about the process. That's all, dismissed."

There it is.

"Well, we know what we're going to be doing today," Gintoki slips out of his seat, whistling a teasing tune.

Hijikata knew it. He saw it coming, and yet, "Where is Tomoda?"

"I'm here!"

"For you," Hijikata hands over the three hundred dollar package.

"Hey, thanks a lot! You remembered!" He unboxes the gift and tucks the brand new 3DS, XL and matte pearl pink, in his school bag. "Well, if you ever need anything more, you know who to find! See ya!"

And _yet_.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N**: Real sorry about the delay. Lot of stuff happened with life. Anyway, here it is at last. AS usual no beta so expect some misses.

**Also**: follow me on Tumblr for extras evolustory . tumblr . com

* * *

**High Tides at Twilight**

* * *

"Oi," a small sound, short, blunt, yet firm enough to permeate the linen sheets cocooning Gintoki's body like an extension of his skin, cradling the wild curls atop his head in a delicate muffler of linen. "I know you can hear me," and yes, he can, "wake up." Though he finds no reason why he should comply.

"I said," an abrasive hand, fingers too familiar to be called foreign, but foreign nonetheless, weave through the thicket of silver curls to grip at the base of its roots. Pain, and pulling, and _hell, it's still early_, "wake up!"

The gentle cradle of warm sheets give away to the violent stronghold named Hijikata. "It's still early! Don't wake Gin-san before late noon!"

"Get your ass out before I shear your fucking perm!" but Gintoki knows he won't, so he continues to nod off against Hijikata's arm.

"I'm serious, you lazy bastard!" and Gintoki feels the blunt edge of metal against his cheek. "I found a pair of scissors in your kitchen earlier!" Or, maybe he is serious this time.

"What are you even doing here, you crazy bastard! I never signed up for a morning call!" Gintoki pushes the hand holding the scissors away, but he elevates his body enough to give a semblance of rising if only to placate the ironclad leader of a pack of rogue dogs.

"Yeah, and if I didn't come to haul your ass out of bed, you'd have wasted half your day away—which I normally wouldn't have cared, but let's not forget we need one hundred Monopoly™ dollars by today."

"Ah, I forgot about that."

"I _know_."

"Well then grab me my pants." Gintoki waves his hand toward a corner of the room and stifles his yawn with the other.

Hijikata gives him an affronted look. "Why do I have to get you your pants?"

"Because if you don't you'll have to see my peachy ass."

Hijikata grunts a series of sounds empathetic to the general emotions of frustration, and like Gintoki expected, makes for the door instead.

"He still could've gotten me my pants first."

The door slams shut, followed by the echoing of a pair of footsteps down the corridor. Gintoki slinks his legs off the side of the bed, scratching the side of his stomach all the way across the other end of the room. He slides into his trousers first, then picks up his white dress shirt and pulls that around himself. He doesn't see his uniform jacket lying around his room, shrugs, and makes his way out the door. On his way down the corridor, he finds his jacket hanging off the handrail to the staircase. Snagging the collar by his index finger, he descends the flight of stair and is greeted by Hijikata's twitching snarl and slanted glare.

"It's cute how you waited," Gintoki hums, contemplating whether or not this was a creepy change of character. "I guess."

For the second time this morning, Hijikata fixes Gintoki with an insulted look, but this one is a bit more, well, pink.

"I didn't want you to go back to sleep! 'Cause you definitely would've!" he shouts with a ready fist by his side, lest it comes to that.

Gintoki raises his hands in surrender, "Whoa, calm down there. Let's not get hot and bothered first thing in the morning, Toshi-chan."

"Who the fuck is hot and bothered! I'ma _beat_ you till you're hot and bothered if you don't get your feet movin'!" to which Gintoki suppresses his teasing tendency and complies obediently. Because really, Hijikata's face is turning a shade of pink that foretold murder.

"Moving. These legs are moving," Gintoki dramatically struts his way out the front door to demonstrate.

* * *

Flour, flowers, doughs, and bows. The hours drift along and between storefronts and backrooms, by late afternoon, the two are able to procure enough dollars to partake in the annual camping trip.

Once they've handed the cash to the teacher (who Gintoki has gone and fondly named Zura Sr.), the class has gathered into the long bus. Everyone paired off, and the two of them spend the next two hours in the bus elbowing each other and spitting about personal space. When they arrive at the campsite, the straggling rays of sunlight are hues of warm magenta.

The bus pulls into a dirt parkade behind a wooden cottage that spans along a narrow creek. With the building structure facing the creek, the back of the cottage bears one door that leads into the kitchen, if the picnic tables and patio deck are any indication. The class empties the bus and gather before the open area around the deck, where the teacher stands at attention.

"Well, we're here. We will be staying at this cottage for the next three nights," he claps his hands together, smiling towards the student body in an out-of-character display of presence. "Seeing as it is near nightfall, let's get dinner started. Can I get the left half of you guys to start a fire and ready the pots, while the right half go and hunt us dinner?"

Another clap and the students disperse into idle groups, some around the picnic tables, others near the treeline, and the few still lingering in the open yard include Gintoki and Hijikata.

A breath of air leaves Hijikata as his shoulders slump the slightest. "We're the right half."

Gintoki scoffs, "This is bullshit. Who hunts for dinner these days? Anyway, typical camping trips are about curry. You know, the stuff with girls and boys flirting while peeling potatoes."

"Nobody would want to flirt with you anyway." Hijikata turns toward the trees, peeling off from Gintoki's side with a, "Let's go."

"Oi! Contrary to popular belief, Gin-san is actually quite popular with the ladies. They're just all too shy to show it, okay. It's not my fault I attract the tsundere type." When Gintoki catches up to Hijikata, he settles beside him and points a spiteful finger at him. "I don't need silky tresses to woo the hearts of Edo. In fact, my natural waves give me a unique edge. Nobody else has natural silver waves! I started that granny hair trend! Girls love me!"

"Nobody said anything about your dumb perm. You're getting all defensive for no reason." The eye-roll that accompanies that line sends Gintoki rolling into his spiel about trademarks, protectiveness (not defensiveness), and the probable sentience of dead follicles.

Hijikata has to physically slap a hand to those lips to get Gintoki to shut up, and not without Gintoki having to have the last word about violent bastards oppressing freedom of speech. After he's finally said enough, Gintoki notices that Hijikata is standing a little behind him and levels a confused glare at the other man. "Why'd you stop?"

In response to the other's judgemental gaze and raised brows, Gintoki squints his eyes in a manner of ignorant indignation, but allows himself to follow the path of Hijikata's finger, turning to stare down the snout of a very hairy, very big, and very livid looking boar. That is also breathing very _warmly_ down Gintoki's mortified face.

In a moment of adrenaline driven reflex, Gintoki's fist dives straight into the moist nostrils flaring before his eyes. Before the gargantuan—actually gargantuan, like, two metres tall and four hundred pounds, _gargantuan_—animal could recover from its initial shock, Gintoki turns and bolts into the opposite direction.

Almost like an afterthought, the bubbling scream surfaces after he has cleared three seconds of forest between them.

Hijikata, who ran the second he recognized the panicked expression on Gintoki's face, jogs up to him. "Now, you scream?"

"Shut up! That surprised me!"

"It was literally breathing down your neck."

"Well not everyone can be a dog and sniff out predators, Toushi-kun!"

"No, because you're an actual sloth, Fuckertoki."

"See, this isn't fair. I'm doing all the work, here! Call me by my name, _Toushi_."

Hijikata brings his movement to a halt. When he realizes that the other has stopped moving once again, Gintoki turns and demands, "What now? Don't try and change the topic, I'm actually pissed off about this."

Hijikata meets Gintoki's incensed glare with a pair of deadpan eyes, glossy cobalt marbles in the warm twilight glow. He blinks, a line of dark lashes casting shadows across cheekbones with each twitch, jump, and flicker of attention. The cobalt-blue eyes chase after the flashing green canopy, the rolling creek, the twittering bird, anything and everything, and the shadows chase right after those cobalt-blues. _A shadow puppet_, Gintoki thinks in a delayed reaction to the erratic dancing of black against skin. "Where are we?" comes like a tidal wave, crashing loud and sweeping far along the raised ridges of his brows, then swallowing the golden sand splattered on the crowns of his cheeks. Fully and completely.

What's left behind, is the same old Hijikata—grey eyes, pale face, knit brows, but frighteningly more ephemeral now, like a mirage fracturing off the waters of a sea in midsummer. A touch, a breath, a single lick of wind across the tips of those lashes will break and carry a man Gintoki knows to be more tenacious than a wolf prowling its territory.

And that scares him. So much that his feet carry him backwards on instinct; yet his hands itch to reach out and brush, to just _feel_ something real in the image before him.

"Oi, you—"

_No_, "—_You_," something is _wrong, _and it's strange, and _Hijikata_ should not be wrong, ever, and so _suddenly_, he's itching to touch him, fix him, mold him back to—

A tidal wave crashing along white sand, sweeping the last tendrils of warmth under its broad span of foaming body and leaving behind what's originally a man who is as tenacious as a carnal wolf waiting on its prey.

"—_You!_"

Dry earth, brittle and unsupported, well-hidden underneath a ledge of shrubbery: when his feet found themselves toeing at the crumbling dirt, he doesn't remember, but gravity works, _he_ works, he just needs to know if the shell-shocked wolf in front of him is working again. Just his hand around his arm, to feel the spasm of muscle and hear the gasp of indignation.

_Working._ As much as gravity is working.

Gintoki lands first, having not much to break his fall but his back. Hijikata comes in tow, landing in a heap of misplaced limbs half on top of Gintoki, warranting a dry heave, and half beside him. Gintoki manages to push enough of Hijikata off himself to sit up, running a ginger hand on the plane of his backside, measuring the damage.

Hijikata grunts painfully to his right, bringing a hand to his head where he has knocked right where his old wound was finally starting to heal. After the cloud of dust subsides and the coughing fit eases, he rights himself and turns to give Gintoki what could be one of his Top Five most murderous glares, mixed with a bit of disgust and you know, the usual snarl that comes with.

"Good job throwing yourself off a cliff and dragging me with you. Now I can't even help you if I wanted to. Really, thank you. You do absolutely all the work, _Gin-to-ki_." If Hijikata's piercing steel glare and nefarious frown didn't spell out how thoroughly Gintoki has exhausted his patience, then the downright foul tone he used to utterly decimate Gintoki's name with definitely drove the message home.

But Gintoki can't even find enough sanity in himself to care, or even act like he cares. Those steel eyes, the permanently knit brows, that snarl he always gives Gintoki—seething and indicative of the demon in 'Demon Vice-Commander' and hideously wolfish—it's all what Gintoki is familiar with, and that's enough for him to ground himself again.

_A mirage; just that. _Fuck_—Mirage, trick of light, illusion—_to_—trick of light, mirage, _but fuck_, what's a light that keeps tricking—_ki_—_

"Gintoki!"

Gintoki whips his head in the direction of the voice. _A tidal wave._

"What's wrong with you? You've been acting like you've seen a ghost," his voice sweeps and crashes, foaming, thrashing, flooding, but in every way like the calm echo of rolling waves, laughing gulls, like drizzling rainfall against puddled shores and—

_Something's wrong_. Something is wrong with Gintoki and he can feel it in the way his palms are tingling a sudden cold, but the only thing he can think about right now is how he _needs_ to feel Hijikata's face. So much that his fingernails feel like they're being eaten by the insatiable itch. But that's not okay.

Not okay. At all. Can't just feel someone's face. Not good. Must itch though. _Must fucking feel this bastard's face, holy fuck, I—_

Gintoki slaps his palm sound across Hijikata's face. The bewildered expression of wide eyes and slack jaws in the shocked silence that follows is enough for Gintoki to punch himself in the brain. He feels like he has personally offended the spirit of somebody's grandmother and maybe just a teeny tiny bit like a pervert too, because at this point, Hijikata is looking one hundred percent scandalized and another ten percent confused and possibly violated.

"_What_ is going on?"

To which the only response Gintoki can think of is that _the evolved form of a wolf, is a domesticated fucking puppy._

"Don't ask me anything right now. I feel like I'm tripping on mushrooms." Which is quite accurate, really.

"I feel like I deserve an explanation for the random slap to the face." He does.

But, "Seriously, don't. The only thing I can think about right now is how much I want to pet a puppy, okay."

The effort Gintoki is putting into avoiding Hijikata's gaze right now is more than his aggregate supply of effort in any given week. Though he doesn't need his eyes to know that Hijikata's train of thought is going many places and all of them are going to be inappropriate, but not quite the right kind of appropriate.

"I always knew you were disturbed to the core."

"Give me a break, okay. I'm probably experiencing sugar withdrawals. This might even be diabetic shock, who knows!" He dips his head, raking a nervous hand through the curly locks at his nape.

Hijikata gives an ignorantly blissful sigh, "Now's not the time to get embarrassed. We need to get back to the camp."

"I'm not embarrassed!" _I'm embarrassed. _"You're embarrassed."

* * *

"But really, we need to find a way back up."

Gintoki hums, scuffing the dirt beneath his foot. "We could just wait around until someone wanders here. You know, we're the protagonists here. The story can't go on without us."

Hijikata gives a skeptical scoff his way. "Don't be too sure. It's because we're the protagonists that we have to return back to the actual plotline. Everything will just be on pause when we're not there."

"No, no, just _our_ story is on pause. Everybody else is living out their plotline and probably making out over stove tops." _Oh,_ that came out way more suggestive than he meant for it to. "Or not. You know, the making out part probably won't work. I mean like, fire, not stove for one. And like, uh not a romantic setting and all that. Yeah."

"Oi."

_Tread carefully_, "What?"

"Oi."

_Learn from past mistakes_, "What! What is it now? A gorilla? A _naked_ gorilla?"

Gintoki is still refusing to look anywhere near Hijikata's line of vision, but he angles his shoulders in a way that at least gives off a facade of attentive arguing. And that slight tilt of his head was enough for a fist to barrel into the side of his jaw. He feels the individual knuckles against his teeth from the force of that punch, surely leaving behind a red mark in its wake.

"There," he turns to properly look at Hijikata, who is wearing a blank face. "That's for before. Now can you please stop acting like a little girl? You're pissing me off."

The surprise punch to the face has Gintoki dazed, gaping openly at Hijikata's composed features for as long as it took to regain cognitive function. "H-How's that fair! A punch for a slap?"

"It's fair because you were being disgusting," Hijikata states, spinning venom through the syllables of the discerning adjective.

He was, which is why he is reflecting and taking every remark in stride, acting more passive than he would if he weren't feeling some kind of guilt. Yet when he breaks it all down for some extrapolating, he doesn't know what he feels guilty about. He doesn't even know if he should be feeling guilty. A slap is nothing given their history of violence.

He sighs, this was really not how he pictured the first day of camp to play out. "Shut up, don't want to talk about it."

"Good," Hijikata grunts, "I definitely don't wanna hear it."

Well, at least the Love Metre didn't lower in causation. Small mercies are more than he could hope for.


	6. Chapter 6

**AN:** To whoever I replied on a review: I WASN'T LYING WHEN I SAID I WAS WORKING ON IT AND IT'LL BE SOON (it's just I forgot to post this on FFN)

* * *

**Type No. 1**

* * *

"This is all your fault." A breathless grunt, dry and raspy. "This is all your fault, and I'm _really_ going to arrest you once we're out of here."

"Fat chance." A retort muffled in the fabric between joints—jerky from the weight on his shoulders. "And hurry up and get up."

"C-Can't—" Wheezing intakes of thin broken breaths with every stretch of knobbly fingers. "Try harder! I'm not there yet."

"I'm the only one trying here! Put some effort in!"

"If I fucking could, I would have already! Push, you idiot!"

"Yeah, yeah, _shut up_." So push, toes coiled, shoulders hunched forward, and face dipped down at the sloping dirt, he does.

"Yes, okay, don't move." Dirt, dust, and stretching limbs. "I got it! I'm gonna have to kick."

"Oi, _kick_? What do you think I am—" The jolting sensation of a grown man launching himself off one's shoulders knocks Gintoki's knees out of stance, "_Fuck!_"

"Alright, I'm up." The distance from where Gintoki stands and where the top of the cliff breaks overhead forces Gintoki to lean back to address the voice.

"Then throw a rope or something," he waggles a couple fingers symbolic of '_something."_

Gintoki mindlessly massages his shoulders as he watches a silhouette of Hijikata bustle about, from the left, the right, peeking under shrubs and into uprooted trunks. With a streak of dirt across his cheek, Hijikata returns from beneath a hollowed log. A hand stretched out, empty palm asking, "Take off your jacket."

"Um," Gintoki cocks his head, his linguistic functions failing to translate the sudden request. "Why?"

"To use as a leverage," Hijikata responds as he shucks off his blazer. "I'll have to tie it to my jacket."

"Right." He slips his arms out of his blazer, balling the article before throwing it overhand. Hijikata does quick work of rolling the two blazers into rope-like configurations, tying the two together at one end and finally lowering the makeshift rope to Gintoki.

Gintoki tugs on the length of cloth before him, testing Hijikata's strength on the other end. One step. He digs a tentative foot into the crevice of a protruding stone, his hands twined in the fabric. Two steps. A hazardous trodden. And three, and a well-paced hike in the making. He tugs, and _he_ pulls, and they both twist fingers into taught sleeves. About halfway, maybe two metres high, Gintoki sees it just as he lifts his foot for another step—the boar. Only this time it's breathing down Hijikata's head.

"Um, Toshi-kun," Gintoki mumbles beneath a hushing breath. Hijikata grunts a questioning noise, peering behind his shoulder when Gintoki jerks a chin toward the looming animal. He stills, shoulders knotting, tensing inwards as he motions into a defensive stance, grip on rope twitching to fall away. "No! Don't let go!"

A frustrated growl trembles between his gritted teeth as Hijikata darts a quick glance at where Gintoki is perched two metres above ground. He averts his eyes back onto the boar and its large front leg, picking up dirt with each ominous kick at the ground.

He digs his fingernails into the rope.

"Okay, don't—" Gintoki makes hasty, heavy-footed steps as he hands fly upon the wrung fabric. He clears the cliff, eyes falling onto Hijikata's upturning glare. "—let go!"

One desperate jump heaves him over Hijikata's head, rope still between their grasps. Gintoki finds his foot behind the boar's shoulders and using that grounding, he thrusts his pelvis in a smooth arc, pivoting to look down on twitching ears. He loops his end of the makeshift rope around its head and between its jaws, tugging the other end out of Hijikata's grip he ties the loose ends behind the boar's head.

Hijikata stands from his crouch. "You just lost us our blazers."

Gintoki scoffs. "No," he hops from the panicking boar's shoulders, gently batting the knees of his trousers when he lands. "I just saved us our asses."

"No," Hijikata echoes, a sharp reprimanding click from his tongue following. He shuffles to place himself between the animal and Gintoki, elbow raised and pointed between its beady black eyes. He delivers a clean jab, decisive and effectively snuffing the feral gleam from its eyes. It flops, keeled over on its stout legs. "_I _just saved us our asses." He reaches behind the fallen head, untying the knot that Gintoki took the trouble to double-knot. "And our blazers." Gintoki cocks a hip as he follows the motions of Hijikata, fiddling still with the coil of sleeves. He wonders what the other is doing with a casual interest, though he can't find the energy in himself to question why Hijikata is looping the rope around one of the boar's leg. Once he's satisfied with work, he extends the other end of the rope toward Gintoki. "And dinner."

Dinner. That had seemed like an ordeal long past, what with falling off a cliff and everything prior. He sighs, "Why do I have—"

"Do you really wanna ask why?" Hijikata's nose scrunches the way noses usually do when lips peel back to from a snarl that is all teeth and intimidation, "Gintoki."

_Nope_. "Yes, sir! Taking helm immediately."

* * *

They make it back to camp before the last rays of light leaves them lost, though dinner is already well underway by that point. Boys and girls were scattered along the benches, heads hung over bowls of stew.

"Everyone who came back late, please ask a friend for the details of tomorrow's itinerary," the teacher announces.

Hijikata scans the crowd for his 'friend' when a curious thought distracts him. "Who's _your_ friend anyway?"

"Hm," Gintoki hums as he too scans the crowd for his friend. He spots a red bobble attached to a ponytail disappearing into the back door. "Oh. Found her."

Gintoki quickly follows after the girl, leaving Hijikata to parse through the crowd once more before deciding to head into the cabin too. Past the kitchen, the long corridor holds four rooms on each side. They don't stop to inspect them. There is the distant sound of indecipherable speech beyond the stretch of rooms keeping them moving along. The left turn after the hallway leads into a common area furnished with long couches along walls and wooden stools atop rugs. On one of the stools, sits Gintoki's 'friend.'

"Kana, you got the itinerary for tomorrow?" he asks, all indifference and casual slouch.

She shuts the book she was reading, straightens her posture, and huffs, tossing a lock of brown curls over her shoulder. "Gintoki."

"Yes, do you have it?"

"Only coming to me when you need something, is that right?"

Steel blue eyes dart between the exchange.

"That's what friends are for! Do you have it!"

"Just because I help you this time doesn't mean you can expect me to in the future!" she declares, standing up to throw a piece of paper at Gintoki.

Steel blue eyes glide across Gintoki's deadpan features, showing no outer countenance of irritation. "You guys are on a first name basis?"

His countenance changes, a slight jerk of brows, albeit only caught off-guard by the sudden question Hijikata injects his way.

"No!" The girl reacts first, face flushed and hands flapping in objection. "It's because he didn't tell me his last name and—I didn't _say_ he could—he just started calling me Kana!"

"You said 'I'm going to call you Gintoki, but don't think that you can call me Kana because of that,' which, to your type, basically means go ahead," Gintoki reasons, dismissing her flushed indignation. He turns to bear a smirk down at Hijikata. "Is our Vice-Commander jealous, perhaps?"

"Who would—No—"

"Don't worry. She's just a mistress at best."

"Who's a mistress! Not like I want to be anything more, but definitely not a mistress, you hear!"

"And when you say that, you actually mean 'Please make me your girlfriend.'"

"I-I don't want to be your girlfriend, idiot Gintoki!"

"_I_ don't care anymore. Bye."

Hijikata spins on his heels, trekking back toward the long corridor.

Gintoki hides his face behind the piece of paper, sneering at Hijikata's back. "Him being a shy-ass makes it that much more fun teasing him."

"Hey, listen to me!" The short girl shouts from below his field of vision.

* * *

He had expended every effort to avoid the perm head after that turnabout conversation. He should have kept his mouth shut about the girl. In hindsight, almost everyone calls the perm by his first name, and he calls whomever whatever he pleases. It was a good thing Tomoda appeared from one of the rooms (bedrooms probably) because he was decidedly not returning to the common area. He shut himself in one of the rooms for the rest of the night, and he would have opted to continue hiding himself the rest of the following morning, had he not been dead set on clearing the game.

Maybe he should have at least stalled for ten more minutes. Maybe that would be enough time for the Yorozuya to finish doing whatever he's doing in front of the only mirror (and sink) in the cabin. The man is standing before the mirror and looking, inspecting every angle of his face with his hand tipping his jaw sideway, his fingers brushing his messy curls this way, that way, and finally pushing his nose flat against the reflective surface.

"What are you doing?" he asks, starting to feel the creeps just from watching the vanity the other is displaying.

The perm, caught doing something so disgusting that Hijikata is feeling some bit of second-hand embarrassment from watching, jolts so terribly that his teeth clack against the glass and he screams loud enough to awaken every student present.

"D-Don't sneak up on me like that!" Gintoki waves a finger at him, spluttering incomprehensible words.

He shakes his head. "Nevermind. Forget I said anything." He elbows the man away from the washing area. "In fact, I didn't see anything either."

"I-I didn't do anything to be ashamed of!" He doesn't respond. "I was just standing in front of the mirror! Even a man has bad hair days!"

Again he ignores the remark. The water runs and he starts to fill up a cup. Gintoki watches him in silence for a moment before turning around and marching off somewhere without so much as a goodbye.

He watches Gintoki's shoulders hike up from his peripheral.

* * *

It was all very confusing business. Very befuddling, and much too frequent an affliction, and one hundred percent the reason why Gintoki screamed like a woman at Hijikata's abrupt arrival. He would maintain that until death.

It wasn't that he was feeling particularly vain or self-conscious that morning. In fact, he could pin the fault on Hijikata quite easily. It was that mayo addict's fault for being so sparkly and wind-swept all the time. No normal man's eyes did that watery thing. _Nobody's_ figure aligns so perfectly against the sun that skin begins to glow and an actual light halo wraps around his or her head. This game was doing things to Hijikata and it was not unreasonable for Gintoki to conclude that this might be happening to himself.

So really, he was doing a self-diagnosis. Not primping.

And now he's got Hijikata thinking he was something so sorry that he needed his ego protected from questioning. How in hell is he going to face the man now?

The problem is taken off Gintoki's hands when Hijikata himself approaches him with (feigned) casual ignorance.

"It's a scavenger hunt and then a test of courage today." He places a bowl in front of Gintoki and slides into the bench in front of him.

"Oh." Gintoki takes the bowl in hand. "What is this?"

"Strawberry ice." He plops a spoon down like a punctuation.

"Yes, I can see that it is strawberry and ice quite literally." Gintoki takes the spoon apprehensively.

He dunks the spoon into the bowl of ice garnished with a singular strawberry on top.

"I made it myself."

"I can see that."

He scoops up a block of ice, holding it up to eye-level, then glancing meaningfully at Hijikata.

"Shut up, there was nothing else," Hijikata retorts, a slight pink dusting his ears.

"No, no. It's cute. I'm touched. Ten love points for effort." He drops the spoon back in the bowl and picks the strawberry up by the stem. "Where'dya get the strawberry though?

"That was the last one; don't bother." He looks off to the side, chin propped up on his hand.

"You must be popular with women, Toshi-kun." Gintoki stirs the ice around. _And I'm not being sarcastic._

Hijikata frowns, darting a dirty glare his way. "Says the guy surrounded by women."

He points his spoon at Hijikata's nose. "Women don't count when they're girls, assassins, gorillas, or stalkers."

Hijikata brushes the spoon away, scrunching his nose in that way of his. He grabs the spoon from Gintoki's and swipes the bowl along with it. "Whatever. Let's go."

Watching the other deposit the utensils in the dirty dish bin, Gintoki smiles into the palm of his hand, thinking, _What a gentleman._


End file.
